Moammar Gadhafi Is Dead

Moammar Gadhafi Is Dead

Libyan government officials confirmed Thursday that ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi has from wounds related to his capture.

Published October 20, 2011

Libyan government officials confirmed Thursday that ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi has died from wounds related to his capture.

Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril confirmed Gadhafi had been killed. "We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.

Officials said Gadhafi suffered wounds to his legs and head during the attack and died shortly thereafter.

"He was also hit in his head," a National Transitional Council official told Reuters. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."

Celebratory gunfire and cries of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" rang out across Tripoli as the reports spread, writes the Associated Press. In Sirte, former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of fighting.

Writes AP:

"During nearly 42 years in power in Libya, Moammar Gadhafi was one of the world's most eccentric dictators, so mercurial that he was both condemned and courted by the West, while he brutally warped his country with his idiosyncratic vision of autocratic rule until he was finally toppled by his own people. The modern Arab world's longest-ruling figure, Libya's "Brother Leader" displayed striking contrasts. He was a sponsor of terrorism whose regime was blamed for blowing up two passenger jets, who then helped the U.S. in the war on terror. He was an Arab nationalist who mocked Arab rulers. In the crowning paradox, he preached a "revolutionary" utopia of people power but ran a one-man dictatorship that fueled the revolution against him."